From the Office and Backyard to the Road, Boat, or Plane–Backstories and
Side Stories While on Assignment. Updates on Personal Projects, Too.

About

Sandy is a fan of great photography and design, and printed pieces remain a favorite format. In addition to writing projects, she’s a producer with Peter Frank Edwards Photographs. She earned her B.A. in Journalism from the University of South Carolina, and studied fiction writing at California State University and in Charleston.

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Archive for January, 2009

01.30

2009

Back in September I posted a preview of my food-travel feature about Murrells Inlet… it’s now in print, in the February issue of Charleston Magazine, earned a mention on the cover. To read a version online, click here.

01.25

2009

The January issue of Charleston Magazine includes my travel piece on Mississippi. It’s the magazine’s first-ever Literary Arts Issue, and my story opens with a visit to William Faulkner’s longtime home.

Walking up the allée of cedars on a chilly morning in Oxford, Mississippi, there’s the feeling that you’ve arrived at one of those heavy places, thick-aired with the stories and life that you imagine and know must have existed there… at least that’s the way it feels to a writer (to me, at that moment) who wonders about the effect of place on writing, or conversely, the effect that a writer can have on a specific place.

I’d come to Rowan Oak, the homestead and William Faulkner’s white-columned house where the Nobel and Pulitzer-winning author lived for 32 years, writing stories of the South in flux… complicated, powerful tales. There looked to be no one else about, and I pushed open the front door, Faulkner’s front door. To the right was a small desk, and then a parlor to left that looked caught in a certain kind of mid-century South, with a piano and velvet chaises. I heard a man say. “Are you the writer giving the reading tonight at Square Books?” I looked around. No, I wasn’t giving a reading, but it became clear that the man was speaking to me. Obviously, I’d come to a place where the first assumption is that someone is a writer. (Pretty cool.)...

You can read the entire piece on the magazine’s re-vamped website. (The issue also includes winning entries from a fiction contest… plenty of fine writing in the magazine this month.)

01.06

2009

I am captivated by this time of year… the marsh grass is golden in clear evening light, bare branches of pecan trees stretch into the sky, flocks of red-winged blackbirds swirl over farm fields. There are indelible scenes everywhere. It’s a stark, beautiful season.

For a few years now, photographer Peter Frank Edwards and I have regularly explored the South in cooler months on assignments, and along the way have developed a personal project, “Winter South.” Using some of the images from this project, last month we had a series of bookplates printed to share with friends and colleagues. (They are adhesive-backed, pretty nice quality.) If you’d like a bookplate or two, just let me know.